According to Hughes, the rocket might have failed to ignite due to a faulty actuator.

According to Hughes, the rocket might have failed to ignite due to a faulty actuator.

“Mad” Mike Hughes, a limo driver and self-styled flat-earther who went viral late last year after first announcing his plans to prove his beliefs by launching himself in a homemade rocket, has yet to make good on those efforts. With his original November plans falling through and the past weekend’s second attempt getting canceled, Hughes stated the reasons behind the cancellation in a recently published video and also suggested that he will be suing California government officials, possibly over the legal issues surrounding his endeavor.

In a video posted on the YouTube channel MGTV History on Monday, Hughes explained the reasons why Saturday’s rocket launch, which took place near the Californian ghost town of Amboy, was suddenly canceled. Speaking to a group of assembled reporters shortly after the launch was called off, Hughes said that there were issues with an actuator that had prevented the rocket from igniting, specifically what could have been a blown o-ring that he wasn’t able to immediately check on. He added that he was planning to wait until the rocket cooled down, so he could investigate further into the matter and gather more information on what caused the failure.

While explaining how dangerous it could be to get to the bottom of the actuator issue by climbing under the rocket, “Mad” Mike Hughes made reference to an event that took place before he became a flat-earther, a 2014 launch where he used a separate homemade rocket to fly 1,374 feet into the sky.

“This ain’t no joke, this thing’s got about 10 different ways to kill you, okay?” Hughes said, as quoted by Newsweek.

“This is why [daredevil stuntman] Evel Knievel didn’t do it twice, it scared the hell out of him. And he didn’t go half what I did the first time.”

Although he didn’t delve into any specifics, Hughes said at the start of the YouTube video that he could theoretically give the rocket launch another try this week, but has to be in court on Tuesday, where he claims he will be suing a number of high ranking California officials, including Governor Jerry Brown, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Senator Kamala Harris, and the state’s Franchise Tax Board and its legal department. Route 66 News added that Hughes claimed to have another court date scheduled for this week, a hearing on Friday over convicted murderer Charles Manson’s estate.

“I’ll drag them in court within two months, [and] I’ll have them in prison at the end of the year,” Hughes told reporters.

With the Bureau of Land Management having forced the cancellation of “Mad” Mike Hughes’ attempt to launch his Research Flat Earth-sponsored homemade rocket in November, his second failed attempt has resulted in several users posting negative comments on his official Facebook page, with many of these commenters calling Hughes out for his belief that the world is flat. However, Gizmodo cited the host of Noize TV’s livestream of the past weekend’s ultimately canceled launch, who believes that Hughes legitimately tried his best to make things work.

“This man, I know he really tried. He really f**king tried. What went wrong could be a number of things. It could be the easiest thing. It could be nothing.”